UC-NRLF 


The  Seven  Joys  of  Reading 


Mary  Wright  Plummer 


UBKAitV 
tCKOQL 

This  booklet  is  sent  with  best  wishes  for  the  New 
Year  and  with  the  hope  that  its  reading  will  bring 
you  pleasure.  The  H.  W.  Wilson  Company 

Christmas,  1916 


The  Seven  Joys  of  Reading 


Mary  Wright  Plummer 


The  H.  W.  Wilson  Company 

White  Plains,  New  York 
1916 


->^-" 


■^J^w 


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Reprinted   from    the   Sewanee   Review,   October,  igio. 


The  Seven  Joys  of  Reading 

WE  must  all  have  noticed  a  certain  change  of  late  in 
the  attitude  of  the  librarian  arid  the  libraiy  assistant 
toward  books.  Whereas,  the  time  was  when  booi<s  were 
regarded  as  things  to  be  entered,  catalogued,  ciassined,  shelf- 
listed,  and  then  given  out  in  as  great  numbers  as  possible  to 
a  more  or  less  willing  public,  and  the  numbers  reported  with 
pride  to  the  professional  journals,  it  seems  now  to  have 
occurred  to  the  majority,  as  it  had  never  failed  to  present 
itself  to  the  minority,  that  books  are  also  to  be  read,  that,  in 
fact,  that  is  what  they  are  for. 

In  the  days  when  the  slogan  of  the  librarian  was  the 
glib  cry,  "The  librarian  who  reads  is  lost,"  and  to  stop 
classifying  or  cataloguing  a  book  or  even  to  want  to  stop 
for  a  dip  into  its  pages,  was  a  positive  crime,  the  librarians 
in  this  country  were  being  led  astray  by  a  misquotation,  or 
rather  a  garbled  quotation,  for  Mark  Pattison's  words  were 
these,  in  speaking  of  Casaubon,  the  great  classical  scholar 
who  was  made  librarian  to  Henry  IV  of  France :  "The  use 
which  he  made  of  the  library  was  one  which  no  librarian 
ought  to  make — it  was  to  read  the  books  ...  he  did  noth- 
ing for  arranging  or  cataloguing,  hardly  anything  for  pub- 
lishing new  texts  ...  he  never  made  any  thorough  or 
complete  investigation  of  what  was  there — much  less  a  cata- 
logue. The  librarian  who  reads  is  lost,"  which,  as  you  see, 
is  quite  a  different  thing  from  the  banner  under  which  we 
went  marching  so  long. 

[Three 

760 I 83 


There  were  many  protestants  in  our  procession,  mur- 
muring, from  time  to  time :  "This  isn't  the  main  track,"  or 
crying,  "We're  lost,  we're  lost!"  and  pointing  in  another 
direction,  miles  away  where  a  much  larger  procession — 
that  of  the  public  we  had  been  serving — was  going  gaily 
along  with  flags  and  music  and  banners  and  all  the  signs  of 
enjoyment,  every  one  with  a  book — and  often  two,  as  many 
as  we  had  been  able  to  get  him  to  carry,  in  fact. 

Not  much  attention  was  paid  to  these  protests,  however, 
until  nearlv  all  the  qu«:stious  about  cataloguing  and  classifi- 
cation and  records  and  methods  had  been  settled  or  had 
almost  sevtled  those  who  discussed  them,  and  in  the  kill 
many  voices  were  heard  saying:  "Well,  what  shall  we  do 
next  with  the  books?"  Then  some  long-suffering  scholar- 
librarian  with  his  pet  edition  of  Horace  or  Virgil  in  his 
pocket  suggested  grimly,  "Suppose  we  read  them."  It  was 
a  brilliant  idea  and  the  first  manifestation  of  its  popularity 
has  come  in  the  form  of  the  book  symposium,  a  delightful 
occasion  for  every  one  who  likes  or  prizes  a  book  to  give  his 
reasons  or,  if  he  pleases,  just  stand  up  and  "enthuse"  about 
it.  Everybody  who  is  fond  of  a  book  is  only  too  glad  to 
listen,  for  some  day  his  turn  will  come  and  his  pet  book  will 
have  its  innings.  And  what  a  jolly  procession  the  book 
symposium  is  making  of  us !  "I'm  so  glad  you  talked  about 
these  essays — I'm  so  fond  of  them,"  or,  "I  never  read  that 
biography  you  spoke  of  but  I'm  going  to  get  it  the  very 
first  time  it  is  in,"  etc.,  etc.  Where  questions  of  cataloguing 
and  accessioning  led  to  puckered  brows  and  worried  faces, 
a  comparison  of  favorite  authors  seems  to  wake  every  one 
up  and  set  every  one  smiling.  We  are  finding  that  many  of 
us  have  always  loved  books,  by  stealth,  as  it  were,  not  wish- 
ing to  be  considered  lost  by  Mark  Pattison  or  any  of  his 
misquoters.  It  is  as  if  a  new  charter  of  liberties  had  been 
put  into  our  hands.  We  are  free  to  read  and  read  openly 
and  need  no  longer  pretend  that  we  read  everything  long 

Four] 


ago,  before  we  became  librarians  and  found  something  more 
important  to  think  of.  And  whereas  it  was  once  the  fashion 
to  smile  in  a  superior  way  over  the  young  person  who 
thought  herself  qualified  to  enter  a  library  school  because 
she  loved  books  and  had  read  a  great  many  good  ones,  we 
are  really  beginning  to  admit  that  that  is  a  qualification, 
after  all. 

One  of  the  city  libraries  of  New  England  for  some  years 
past  has  actually  spent  money  in  printing  in  its  bulletin  the 
personal  opinions  of  some  of  the  stafif  about  the  new  books 
and  nev/  editions  added,  which  shows,  when  you  come  to 
think  of  it,  that  they  must  have  read  the  books  more  or 
less.  In  a  way,  this  could  be  justified,  even  to  those  who 
think  the  reading  of  books  too  frivolous  for  a  serious  libra- 
rian, for  this  acquaintance  with  the  books  enables  the  editor 
of  the  bulletin  to  say  such  charming  things  about  them  as 
to  make  the  public  want  to  take  them  out — and  that,  of 
course,  is  justification  enough.  A  second  library  is  follow- 
ing the  bulletin-model  of  this  one,  and  any  day  we  may  see 
a  third  or  a  fourth,  though  good  example  is  not  so  "catch- 
ing" as  bad,  it  is  said.  Lately  this  same  New  England 
library  has  gone  so  far  as  to  publish  a  list  of  its  modern 
poetry,  and  under  the  leading  names  to  quote  such  admir- 
ably chosen  stanzas  as  to  make  of  the  list  a  fascinating  little 
anthology  of  the  editor's  special  favorites,  let  us  say. 

And  so,  although  the  new  fashion  is,  as  yet,  on  trial,  I 
am  emboldened  to  say  a  word  or  two  on  what  I  shall  call 
"The  Seven  Joys  of  Reading."  Of  course  there  may  be 
more — there  may  be  seventy  times  seven — I  could  think  of 
more  myself,  probably — but  I  knozv  there  are  seven.  Some 
of  these  come  when  we  are  children,  long  before  we  do 
much  thinking  about  our  reading  and  when  it  is  still  a 
purely  sensuous  enjoyment,  and  the  first  is  the  joy  of 
familiarity.  Who  that  has  watched  the  story-telling  of  to- 
day, has  not  seen  the  little  bits  of  children  smile  all  over 

[Fivs 


their  faces  and  begin  to  hug  themselves,  as  the  story  teller 
began,  "Once  upon  a  time  there  were  a  king  and  a  queen." 
And  so  in  reading  the  story.  You  knew  that  story  and  you 
knew  it  was  good,  and  as  you  went  on  and  came  to  this 
turn  in  the  plot  and  that  ever-to-be-remembered  speech,  you 
could  have  squeezed  the  very  type  for  pleasure.  It  was  the 
joy  of  familiarity  that  made  you  like  to  read  about  "Little 
Susy"  in  one  after  another  of  six  small  volumes  and  about 
"Little  Prudy"  and  then  about  all  her  family,  one  by  one. 
You  did  not  have  that  chill  in  opening  a  new  one  of  a  series 
that  you  felt  when  you  first  opened  an  entirely  new  book 
and  had  to  move  to  a  new  town  and  meet  a  lot  of  strange 
people.  After  you  had  read  such  a  book,  you  came  back  to 
the  old  ones  and  felt  warm  and  comfortable  again,  and 
screwed  yourself  all  up  into  a  knot  in  the  corner  by  the 
fire  and  read  them  all  over  for  the  fourth  or  fifth  time. 

We  are  but  children  of  a  larger  growth,  and  to  this  day 
there  are  some  of  us  who  periodically  take  down  "David 
Copperfield"  or  "The  Mill  on  the  Floss"  or  "Henry  Es- 
mond" or  "Emma"  or  "Barchester  Towers,"  and  refresh 
our  memories  of  old  friends,  yes,  and  of  old  foes ;  wdio  at 
Christmas  time  think  we  must  read  the  "Christmas  Carol" 
for  old  sake's  sake,  who  turn  away  from  the  modern  song- 
ster chirping  in  every  magazine  and  go  back  to  "Thanatop- 
sis"  or  "In  Memoriam"  or  "Snow-bound" — to  hear  the  fami- 
liar lines  rolling  in  like  waves,  one  after  another,  in  their 
well-known  cadence.  Of  course,  there  are  some  books  that 
are  "born  old,"  such  as  "Joseph  Vance,"  for  instance.  As 
we  read  that  there  came  gradually  upon  us  such  a  haunting 
sense  of  familiarity  that  we  w^ere  convinced  it  had  been 
known  to  us  and  loved  by  us  in  some  previous  state  of 
existence — there  was  none  of  the  chill  of  the  untried,  the 
discomfort  of  adjustment  to  a  new  writer,  a  new  theme,  a 
new  way  of  seeing  things. 

Six] 


The  joy  of  familiarity  comes  not  alone  from  novels  and 
poems.  You  can  turn  at  the  right  moment — and  there  are 
mental  as  well  as  physical  settings  for  such  enjoyments — to 
many  an  essay  the  pages  of  which  show  that  that  is  where 
the  book  has  been  opened  most  often.  Don't  say  that  you 
have  not,  more  times  than  one,  on  a  cold  winter  Sunday 
when  dinner  is  later  than  usual,  used  "The  Dissertation  on 
Roast  Pig"  as  an  appetizer.  Or  that  you  have  not  found 
satisfaction  for  an  oft-recurring  mood  of  wanting  you  know 
not  what — in  some  perfect  piece  of  writing  such  as  Pater's 
"Child  in  the  House."  Or  that,  feeling  limp  and  languid, 
you  have  not,  time  and  again,  breathed  in  Emerson's  "Self- 
reliance"  like  a  draught  of  salt  sea  air. 

One  knows  where  to  go  for  the  remedies  needed  by  one's 
constitution — one  does  not  try  new  prescriptions  when  the 
old  ones  have  always  answered ;  and  in  one's  mental  and 
emotional  medicine-chest,  the  old  specifics  hold  their  own, 
this  for  homesickness,  that  when  you  need  bracing,  the  other 
to  make  you  gay,  and  the  fourth  to  give  you  a  sense  of  com- 
fort and  cosiness  and  rest  you  for  your  next  sally  into  the 
cold  world. 

The  second  joy  is  the  joy  of  surprise.  And  this,  too, 
belongs  in  a  measure  to  childhood  when  everything  is  new 
and  the  trick  of  weaving  plots  is  unsuspected.  Do  you 
remember  when  the  wandering  prince  or  princess,  tired  and 
hungry  and  cold,  lost  in  the  dark  wood  at  nightfall,  appealed 
to  you  as  in  so  dreadful  a  case  that  you  didn't  see  how  it 
was  ever  to  be  mended?  And  then — suddenly  came  the 
life-saving  solution — "He  saw  a  light !"  Oh,  that  light  that 
twinkles  in  the  pages  of  fairy  tales !  What  a  big  sigh  of 
relief  it  affords  one !  How  clever  it  was  of  the  old  story- 
tellers to  save  it  for  the  last  emergency!  It  meant  shelter 
and  warmth  and  food  and  probably  friends — though  we  did 

[SXVXM 


find  sometimes  that  even  bands  of  robbers  flourished  decep- 
tive Hghts  that  lured  to  danger. 

The  joy  of  surprise  for  us  older  ones  lies  not  in  new 
books,  not  in  the  discoveries  and  inventions  and  new  theories 
that  fill  the  modern  page,  to  all  these  we  are  hardened,  proof 
— nothing  of  that  kind  can  surprise  us ;  it  lurks  instead  in 
the  old  book.  We  pick  up  a  volume  and  hear  Pliny  talking 
about  lecturers  in  old  Rome : 

"We  approach  the  hall,"  he  says,  "as  if  compelled  by 
main  force ;  many  of  us  sit  outside  the  door  and  try  to 
overcome  the  ennui  by  discussing  the  gossip  of  the  town. 
Messengers  are  surreptitiously  sent  in  to  inquire  whether  the 
lecturer  has  really  made  his  appearance,  whether  he  has 
finished  his  prologue,  or  how  many  sheets  are  still  left  to 
be  read.  Then,  when  we  hear  that  the  moment  of  deliver- 
ance is  not  very  far  oft',  we  come  in  slowly,  sit  on  the  edge 
•of  our  chairs,  and  do  not  even  wait  for  the  end  of  the 
-discourse  to  slip,  or  steal  quietly  away."  The  lecture-ridden 
reader  of  today  at  once  feels  a  surprised  kinship  with  the 
■old  Roman  that  nothing  can  weaken. 

■  We  take  up  "Job"  and  hear  him  say  to  his  comforters, 
"Oh,  yes,  you  know  it  all,  of  course,"  only,  as  Job  put  it,  it 
•was  "No  doubt  but  ye  are  the  people  and  wisdom  shall  die 
•with  you."  We  find  with  Emerson's  farmer  that  Plato  has 
got  "some  o'  my  idees."  And  in  Chaucer  we  find  literally 
a  bit  of  modern  slang,  "Come  ofT,"  used  in  much  the  same 
sense,  while  Shakespeare  says,  "And  my  good  angel  fire  my 
bad  one  out."  / 

The  surprise  of  finding  human  nature  always  human 
nature,  ever  since  there  is  any  record  of  humanity,  of  find- 
ing that  truths  that  we  think  modern  have  been  apprehended 
or  glimpsed  by  the  ancients,  and  sometimes  grasped  fully 
and  examined  on  all  sides,  of  learning  that  love  and  friend- 
ship and  compassion  are  as  old  as  the  hills,  is  one  of  the 
rewards  that  await  him  who  reads  old  books.     He  feels  that 

Eight] 


he  could  take  issue  with  Aeschylus,  split  hairs  with  Plato, 
quarrel  with  Lord  Bacon,  be  instructed  by  Leonardo,  and 
smoke  with  Raleigh,  if  only  he  had  them  here,  with  such 
common  meeting-ground  as  he  has  found  in  their  written 
words.  And  his  respect  for  Solomon  grows  apace,  who 
knew  and  said  that  there  was  nothing  new  under  the  sun. 

The  social  reformer  in  particular  must  have  this  joy  of 
surprise  when  he  looks  over  an  old  book.  From  the  days 
of  the  bricks  without  straw  to  Piers  Ploughman  and  the 
Cry  of  the  Children,  literature  is  full  of  the  oppression  and 
injustice  and  unfairness  that  he  is  so  prone  to  consider  the 
especial  sin  of  his  own  generation.  Whether  the  surprise 
one  migbt  experience  on  discovering  that  these  were  all 
ages-old  and  world-wide  could  be  called  a  joy,  is  perhaps 
doubtful,  but  it  makes  one  feel  a  little  less  guilty  personally. 

When  the  epidemic  of  influenza  first  reached  this  coun- 
try and  was  characterized  as  a  mysterious  new  malady,  I 
came  across  a  description  of  it  in  a  letter  of  Campbell  the 
poet,  written  in  1803,  with  a  surprise  that  was  relief,  if  not 
exactly  joy.  It  had  happened  before,  then,  and  people  were 
not  frightened  to  death  and  the  world  had  survived,  after  all ! 

A  few  years  ago  a  strange  figure  appeared  in  my  office, 
a  little  man,  a  foreigner,  of  Hebrew  race,  I  judged,  who 
ofifered  for  sale  very  simply  a  volume  of  philosophy  of  his 
own  writing,  printed  by  some  third-rate  printer,  cheaply 
bound  and  in  no  way  attractive.  The  author  told  me  he 
was  a  cobbler,  if  I  remember  aright,  but  he  had  thought  out 
this  book  and  by  great  economy  had  managed  to  get  it 
printed.  Ordinarily  a  librarian  makes  short  shrift  of  book 
peddlers ;  but  there  was  something  in  this  case  that  made 
me  buy  the  book  without  any  reference  to  its  merits — some- 
thing in  the  man  himself  that  forbade  me  to  disappoint  him. 
I  watched  for  notices  of  it,  not  being  myself  a  judge  of 
philosophical  writings.  A  long  review  of  it  appeared  after 
a  time.     Imagine  the  astonishment,  astonishment  tbat  must 

[NiNK 


have  been  a  joy,  of  the  reviewer  when  he  found  as  he  read 
that  this  uneducated  cobbler  who  had  never  read  and  prob- 
ably never  heard  of  Spinoza,  had  worked  out  a  similar 
philosophy,  was  as  original  a  thinker,  in  fact,  as  Spinoza! 
Had  he  been  first,  he  would  have  been  as  famous. 

This  very  rare  surprise  of  finding  something  unusual 
where  one  expects  the  average  and  the  ordinary,  belongs  to 
new  books  with  reputations  as  yet  unmade,  and  the  joy  of 
surprise  is  mingled  with  the  joy  of  discovery,  and  the  joy 
of  proprietorship  that  comes  by  right  of  discovery.  There 
is  nothing  at  such  times  that  one  wants  to  do  so  much  as 
to  get  upon  a  fence  or  a  stone  and  crow ! 

The  third  joy  is  that  of  sympathy.  There  are  all  kinds 
of  sympathy,  including  that  of  a  perfectly  good  tooth  with 
one  that  aches.  It  is  not  only  of  this  kind  that  one  feels 
like  using  Mark  Twain's  anathema,  "Darn  such  sympathy !" 
For  there  is  the  author  who  won't  let  us  off  without  a  few 
pages  of  pathos,  who  deliberately  works  us  up  to  the  weep- 
ing-point (we  can  see  the  memorandum  in  his  notebook, 
"Make  'em  cry  in  this  chapter"'),  and  who  makes  it  abso- 
lutely impossible  to  the  tender-hearted  to  read  certain  pas- 
sages aloud.  One  dislikes  very  much  to  sit  in  a  subway 
train  and  sob,  or  to  have  one's  voice  give  way  when  one  is 
reading  aloud  to  one's  family,  yet  these  are  the  humiliations 
that  this  kind  of  sympathy  puts  upon  one.  In  childhood,  it 
was  a  different  thing.  Then  we  loved  to  cry  and  deliber- 
ately read  over  again  the  chapter  that  excited  our  lachrymal 
glands.  We  are  not  so  easily  worked  upon  now  as  in  the 
days  of  Little  Eva  and  Beth  March  and  Louie's  Last  Term 
at  St.  Mary's ;  though  some  of  our  childhood's  favorites 
have  the  power  of  wringing  a  few  tears  from  us  still  if  they 
catch  us  in  an  impressionable  moment.  But  we  no  longer 
find  this  kind  of  sympathy  a  joy. 

TenI 


The  power  of  fiction  is  perhaps  at  no  time  better  demon- 
strated than  when  we  take  sides  with  the  character  against 
the  author,  accusing  him  of  cruelty,  unfairness,  and  lack  of 
sympathy  with  one  or  another  of  his  creations.  Some  one 
complained  to  George  Eliot  that  she  had  been  cruel  to  poor 
Hetty  in  "Adam  Bede."  'Tf  I  had  not  made  her  pitiful, 
you  could  not  have  pitied  her,"  was  the  reply.  Many  times 
as  I  have  read  "Martin  Chuzzlewit,"  I  find  myself  still 
scanning  every  line  referring  to  the  detestable  Jonas  for 
some  redeeming  trait,  hoping  against  hope  that  he  may 
prove  less  black  this  time  than  previous  readings  have  shown 
him  to  be.  The  feeling  is  akin  to  that  I  had  as  a  child  in 
rereading  a  book  with  a  tragic  ending,  that  perhaps  noiv 
it  would  turn  out  differently.  However,  neither  is  this  the 
kind  of  sympathy  that  is  a  joy — it  is  indeed  rather  an 
anxiety.  The  joy  lies  in  finding  in  a  writer  one  who  would 
evidently  be  congenial  to  us  if  we  knew  him,  who  sees 
with  us,  who  does  not  rub  us  the  wrong  way,  who  does 
not  explode  fireworks  at  our  ear  nor  lay  traps  for  our  feet, 
but  goes  along  at  the  pace  we  like  best,  turning  aside  just 
where  we  would  turn  aside  if  left  to  ourselves,  and  coming 
neck  and  neck  with  us  to  a  common  conclusion.  This  sym- 
pathy goes  out  chiefly  to  the  essayists,  though  occasionally 
a  biography  or  an  autobiography  is  so  happily  written  that 
one  feels  one  has  met  a  real  personality  and  found  a  friend. 
Dr.  Johnson  and  Charles  Lamb  are  the  two  examples  that 
come  at  once  to  one's  mind  as  authors  arousing  this  pecu- 
liar personal  sympathy,  and  every  librarian  must  have  the 
Same  feeling  on  reading  Prothero's  "Life  of  Henry  Brad- 
shaw." 

It  is  literally  true  that  there  is  companionship  in  books 
when  one  finds  the  author  who  is  simpatico,  as  the  Italians 
say.  And  I  can  imagine  a  deaf  person  or  one  cut  ofif  in 
some  other  way  from  congenial  human  society  actually  find- 

[ Eleven 


ing  his  friends  between  the  pages  of  his  books.  Even  in 
life  the  best  friendships  are  based  not  so  much  on  propin- 
quity and  contact  as  on  the  touching  of  minds  and  spirits, 
and  this  is  almost  completely  obtainable  in  a  book.  Not 
quite,  because  there  can  be  no  dialogue,  one  must  be  simply 
a  listener,  so  that  talk  really  is  best;  but  failing  the  ability 
to  talk  together  because  of  a  few  thousand  miles  of  distance 
or  a  few  hundred  years  of  time,  the  next  best  thing  is  to 
have  a  friend  to  whom  one  can  listen  and  whose  spiritual 
portrait,  at  least,  one  can  discern. 

The  fourth  joy  is  the  joy  of  appreciation,  one  that  be- 
longs to  our  maturer  years,  and  concerns  itself  chiefly  with 
the  ivay  of  saying  things.  There  are  refrains  that  seize  us 
powerfully  with  some  haunting  quahty  and  sing  themselves 
in  our  ears  all  day,  quick  turns  of  speech  that  bring  a 
responsive  smile,  the  use  of  an  old  word  in  a  new  and 
exactly  fitting  sense  that  gives  an  unaccountable  thrill  of 
pleasure,  a  dainty  exactness  of  definition  or  description  that 
is  wholly  satisfying,  w^ord-pictures  that  have  all  the  color 
and  vividness  of  those  on  canvas,  and  we  linger  over  the 
lines,  tasting  and  retasting,  and  w^ondering  why  we  cannot 
say  things  so  since  we  so  enjoy  them  when  others  say  them. 
The  subtly  funny  things  that  you  do  not  see  until  you  have 
passed  them  (like  violet-hunting  in  the  spring,  some  one 
says),  and  that  keep  you  smiling  and  turning  back  and  that 
you  must  read  aloud  to  some  one,  the  pathetic  aspect  of 
things  shown  by  a  mere  word  or  two,  that  catches  you 
unaware  and  makes  a  clutch  at  your  throat,  the  world-old 
truth  that  strikes  you  anew  because  of  its  perfect  and  vital 
expression — it  is  chiefly  when  one  reads  for  this  joy  and 
finds  it  that  one  realizes  the  time  wasted  on  commonplace 
stuff.  It  has  become  the  fashion  in  some  quarters  to  decry 
Stevenson  and  Pater  as  aflfected  and  far-fetched  and  unreal, 
and  there  may  be  reason  for  the  charge,  but  on  the  whole 

Twelve] 


they  do  a  good  work  for  us  in  reminding  us  that  there  is 
magic  in  the  how  things  are  said.  What  if  Stevenson  did 
consciously  write  one  page  in  the  style  of  the  eighteenth 
century  and  another  in  that  of  the  time  of  James  I,  and 
write  in  Lamb's  manner  as  well  as  Lamb  himself !  In  so 
doing  he  preached  the  importance  of  skill  and  deftness  in 
handling  one's  tools,  a  doctrine  somewhat  needed  in  a  gen- 
eration whose  vocabulary  and  construction  grow  more  and 
more  careless  and  show  less  and  less  pains. 

The  fifth  joy  is  that  of  expansion.  To  be  caught  out  of 
our  daily  rut  and  be  taken  up  where  we  get  the  birdseye 
view,  to  see  the  kingdoms  of  the  earth  and  their  relation  to 
us,  to  make  friends  in  every  land,  of  every  tongue,  and  of 
every  age,  to  escape  from  the  steam-heated  air  of  conven- 
tional respectability  and  soar  among  the  great  realities,  to 
see  as  by  sudden  mtuition  the  true  proportions  of  things 
and  never  to  quite  forget  the  lesson  afterward,  even  to 
wallow  for  a  bit  with  primitive  beasts  in  their  mire,  just  as 
an  experience  and  to  help  one  understand — these  things 
make  one  rise  from  a  book  a  changed  being,  with  wider 
horizons,  broader  sympathies,  deeper  comprehension,  and  no 
less  firm  a  grip  on  the  essentials  because  the  non-essentials 
have  been  classified  as  such  at  last. 

The  epoch-making  books  in  science,  the  philosophy  of 
history,  great  tragedies  greatly  written,  novels  that  are 
faithful  portrayals  of  other  lands  and  other  ideals — all  of 
these  open  doors  to  a  wider  and  sometimes  a  higher  world. 

The  people  who  like  only  one  kind  of  book,  and  won't 
even  try  any  other  kind,  who  read  only  to  confirm  their  own 
opinions  and  prejudices,  forever  miss  this  exhilarating  joy. 
Exploring,  even  in  imagination,  with  one's  feet  on  the 
hearthstone  and  a  fair  certainty  that  eventually  one's  mind 
also  will  come  home,  has  its  adventures  and  even  its  dan- 
gers, and  one  is  bigger  and  better  for  having  passed  through 

[Thirteen 


them.  As  I  read  of  the  courage  and  perseverance  and  pluck 
of  Isabella  Bird,  of  Mrs.  Rowan,  the  flower-hunter,  of  Mary 
Kingsley,  and  other  women-travelers  and  explorers,  I  find 
out  what  is  wanting  in  my  own  make-up  and  have  a  better 
idea  of  comparative  values,  and  though  that  may  not  be  a 
joy  the  admiration  of  my  betters  is  decidedly  one.  As  one 
reads  "J^^'i^^s  Caesar,"  and  "King  Lear"  and  "Hamlet,"  one 
has  the  joy  of  knowing  that  if  one  has  not  the  mind  of 
Shakespeare,  at  least  one  has  enough  to  follow  its  thoughts 
and  appreciate  the  wonder  of  it — and  that  is  something,  as 
Hans  Andersen  says. 

But  I  must  get  on  with  my  joys  or  they  will  be  turned 
into  mourning. 

I'he  sixth  joy  is  the  opposite  of  the  joy  of  sympathy,  for 
it  is  the  joy  of  shock.  To  most  of  us  it  is  an  acquired  taste 
— and  it  takes  time  to  make  shock  into  a  joy,  just  as  it  does 
to  make  oneself  willing  to  take  hold  of  the  handles  of  an 
electric  battery  after  one  experience.  The  paradoxical  peo- 
ple that  give  shocks  are  likely  to  get  on  our  nerves,  and  if 
we  aren't  of  the  minority  who  love  we  are  of  the  majority 
who  hate,  for  there  is  no  half-way  attitude  for  most  of  us 
toward  these  electric  authors.  We  either  take  them  very 
seriously  or  we  turn  up  our  noses  at  them  as  charlatans. 
They  are  not  charlatans,  but  perhaps  we  may  call  them 
jugglers — they  twist  and  turn  the  truth  so  that  it  has  faces 
we  never  saw  before,  and  either  we  think  we  have  never 
seen  truth  at  all  until  now  or  because  of  its  newness  we 
refuse  to  recognize  this  one  aspect  of  it.  Their  work  is 
purely  intellectual,  so  there  is  really  nothing  to  get  mad  about 
any  more  than  there  is  about  the  juggler's  trick  that  we  can't 
see  through.  They  have  done  something  we  couldn't  do, 
they  have  shown  us  something,  or  pretended  to  show  us 
something,  we  never  saw  before,  and  the  thing  for  us  to  do 
is  to  take  it  for  what  it  is  worth  as  an  exhibition  and  rejoice 

Fourteen] 


in  the  cleverness  of  it.  And  if  we  do  make  a  joy  of  the  shock 
we  get,  our  mental  circulation  is  quickened  and  we  feel  so 
wideawake  that  the  first  thing  we  know  we  are  incurring 
again  the  risk  of  contact  with  the  battery.  These  writers 
are  particularly  good  for  the  people  who  constitutionally  dis- 
like them — by  the  time  one  has  reached  the  point  of  finding 
joy  in  repeated  shocks,  the  cure  is  pretty  well  eflfected  and 
one  needs  them  no  longer — one  is  now  thoroughly  stirred 
up,  with  the  blood  circulating  to  every  finger-end  and  one 
can  do  some  tricks  oneself. 

The  serious  shocker  who  speaks  his  mind,  like  Ibsen,  gets 
a  readier  hearing  because  people  believe  he  is  in  earnest — 
they  are  not  afraid  that  if  they  agree  with  him  he  will  sud- 
denly say,  "over  the  left"  and  deny  all  he  has  just  been  con- 
verting them  to.  Besides,  he  can  generally  produce  a  lot 
of  evidence  and  doesn't  ask  you  to  take  a  new  truth  or  a 
new  view  of  truth  on  his  unsupported  word.  The  paradox 
maker  is  an  irritant,  and  the  serious  shocker  is  a  stimulant, 
and  they  are  both  good  for  a  sluggish  circulation.  To  peo- 
ple who  are  already  sufficiently  excitable  they  are  an  intoxi- 
cant, and  we  have  all  seen  people  who  have  imbibed  Bernard 
Shaw  almost  to  the  verge  of  d.  t.  Time  was  when  I  would 
no  more  have  taken  a  shock  voluntarily  than  I  would  have 
walked  up  to  a  strange  cow;  but  one  or  two  experiences  of 
the  gasp  and  the  tingling  sensation  proved  that  it  "didn't 
hurt,"  as  the  children  say,  and  so  I  have  come  to  put  the 
shock  among  the  joys  of  reading — a  fearful  joy,  to  be  sure, 
but  none  the  less  a  joy. 

The  last  of  the  seven  is  the  joy  of  revelation.  Of  course, 
this  does  not  belong  to  reading  alone.  Music,  pictures, 
sculpture,  architecture,  drama — all  contain  the  possibilities 
of  revelation.  Perhaps  science  in  these  days  may  be  counted 
the  great  revealer.  Between  the  sober,  well-supported  pillars 
that  have  become  its  foundation,   one   catches   glimpses   of 

[FlPTEEK 


visions,  of  dazzling  hypotheses,  of  broken  arcs  of  the  perfect 
circle  of  law,  and  one  hears  strains  of  music  that  seem  to 
belong  to  otiier  strains  heard  before  and  to  indicate  a  great 
harmony  somewhere  if  our  cars  were  only  attuned  to  hear 
it.  Through  some  sentence  of  apparently  secondary  im- 
portance, we  catch  sight  of  possibilities  so  great,  so  revolu- 
tionary, that  we  are  a  trifle  dizzy — in  fact,  it  is  only  in 
snatches  that  we  can  bear  such  revelations,  and  they  are 
gone  before  we  can  register  them  or  know  truly  just  what  we 
have  seen.  But  we  realize  that  for  one  fleeting  instant,  we 
have  been  rapt  out  of  the  body,  that  we  have  seen  with 
something  other  than  the  bodily  eye  or  the  eye  of  the  mind, 
that  the  little  intuitions  we  experience  occasionally  are  to 
these  great  revelations  as  tz^.'ice  tzco  is  four  is  to  the  calculus. 
Whether  the  writer  knew  when  he  penned  his  sentence  that 
it  would  be  an  opoi  sesame  to  those  who  read,  is  doubtful. 
Is  it  not  Emerson  who  says  that  there  is  inspired  reading  as 
well  as  inspired  writing?  One  reads  the  same  words  at 
another  time  and  they  produce  no  vision ;  one  tries  to  an- 
alyze them  to  see  where — through  what  opening — one  had 
one's  glimpse,  and  they  are  solidly  welded  together;  but  no 
number  of  failures  and  disappointments  can  ever  convince 
one  that  there  was  no  revelation — the  experience  was  too. 
keen  and  the  efifect  too  overwhelming  to  be  either  denied  or 
forgotten.  As  a  rule,  we  look  for  revelation  of  this  kind, 
if  anywhere,  in  religious  books,  but  we  find  it,  or  rather  it 
finds  us,  for  we  seem  to  have  nothing  to  do  with  it,  through 
the  pages  of  almost  any  book  written  in  seriousness.  Great 
as  is  the  joy  when  it  arrives,  it  is  so  rare  that  I  almost  feel 
I  am  wrong  in  placing  among  the  joys  of  reading  one  that 
ma\  come  but  once  in  a  lifetime. 


Sixteen] 


■tteA 


14  DAY  USE 

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